Aughey Tumblr: Archive

Jigsaw Puzzles

I rarely get a jigsaw puzzle out of the closet, but when one is already out I can spend hours putting it together. I do enjoy putting them together and I am quite good at it. My wife gave a talk to a church group a few months back. At each table, there was a small can of play-doh for each person, and during the talk there was a play-doh activity. During the non-activity part of the talk,...

Dec 31st

Pay it forward

My friend Jamey wrote an article about the story that is making its way around the intertubes. The general complaint is that people are paying off bills of other people who over extended themselves to corporations who are getting larger and larger. In our opinion, this isn’t the best application of philanthropy. I wanted to write about something I do on occasion to make someone...

Dec 22nd

Just once I'd like to receive this letter...

Mr. Aughey We did a routine audit of our records, and discovered that every time you have called technical support it was because of a problem on our end. In spite of your clear explanation of each problem, our first level support agents condescendingly asked you to reboot your modem and computer, wasting everyone’s time. Even though you researched the modem light pattern prior to...

Dec 5th

Nov 11th

Sep 17th

Airport Observations

So I’ve spent an extraordinary long amount of time in airports the past couple of days. For each of my destinations, I would have arrived hours earlier if I had driven. Since I have time, I spend most of it watching people and observing. The first observation is the computer interface that airline gate agents use to issue boarding passes. Why is this so complicated? I had one of the most...

Jun 22nd

1 tag

WakeMate Experience

Just to be clear from the beginning, this is not intended to be a recommendation (or in this case, a non-recommendation) of the Wakemate product - this is just my personal experiences with the device. There are plenty of people who love this device and it has changed their...

Jun 10th

A new political system (proposal)

We currently elect representatives to represent our political interests. The idea being, we elect someone who we think will write laws and vote for things that will be good for us. In theory, if the majority of the people vote for a person, that person’s ideals are in sync with the people who voted them in. Rather than every person needing to keep up with all the goings-on in their capitol,...

Aug 10th

Jun 27th

ERA Fail - Deceptive advertisement gone wrong

I sent this suggestion in to the Procter & Gamble people. My follow up number is #100605-001913. Your twin pack of 2 - 100 Oz. bottles purchased at Sam’s Club has incorrect metrics. On the box it says, “15% MORE*”. The star at the bottom says, “*than 170oz.” Now, while the 15% more sounds like you are getting a great deal, the advertisement is actually...

Jun 5th

Missed Opportunity

I always look for ways businesses can be better. Ways they can be awesome with little effort. Often, I’ll see subtle things hotels can change, or online companies can do that take almost no effort, but have a huge impact on the customer experience. Maybe one customer can have a huge impact on your return. Maybe not, but a customer who is a champion for your product is worth a lot. Last...

May 11th

1 tag

Man Verses Table Saw

Naturally the table saw wins. Here’s what happened to me. It was my daughter’s 7th birthday. She was having a zuzu pet party. We bought all the guests zuzu pets to have and play with at the party. I wanted to make some tunnels they could go through, so I made a test tunnel out of PVC pipe. I basically filleted one side of the 3” pipe to make an arched tunnel. The test...

May 4th

How much is too much?

We attended a trivia night tonight. I’ll admit, I drank some wine. Quite a lot of wine actually. So I’m curious, from a intellectual point of view, what my blood alcohol level is/was. I’m still quite able to realize how impaired I am right now, and I realize there is no way I would be able to operate a motor vehicle. This keyboard is kicking my butt right now as it is. So...

Feb 14th

Google Voice Translations are funny

Below is the translation from a Google Voice message. (this was not intended for me) Hello, This message is for skittish update from the best. I’m sorry. My name is rolm calling for therecording connection the school but you know we’ll work in recording studio. If you could please giveme a call back. At (800) 295-4433. I’m at extension 2283. The number is (800)...

Feb 10th

Nirvana Schnucks Checkout

I think about this every time I check out at Schnucks. I’ve never worked in retail, but I can imagine that there are times when you’re working the register and the checkout just goes so very smooth (and not so smooth). The items scan just right, the handles are accessible, etc. What I want to know is, what makes a “good checkout”? One where you want to pump your first...

Feb 1st

Healthcare

I have never written a political blog, and this isn’t a trend, but I need to say this. I haven’t heard Obama’s address to congress yet, so this has not been influenced by that. I have posted this on both facebook and twitter, “I will be proud to pay more taxes if it means someone less fortunate than I receives health care.” I don’t care what administration is...

Sep 10th

diskcached

I want memcached, but rather than allocating memory, it stores it on disk. This should be out there, I just haven’t seen it. The use case would be for people with low-memory virtual machines who can benefit from caching, but do not have the memory to allocate to it. I guess technically it would work by simply using regular memcached and taking the disk page hit if it happens - perhaps I...

Aug 23rd

Example for Buckets

I am working on a database system called Buckets. The idea behind this are structured data records that are bound together through (optionally) classified associations. The goal of this is to have a structured and interlinked set of data records to organize information. Here’s an example of something I’m doing where I could use this system… I’m dealing with an external...

Aug 6th

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSbssO2DR7A →

Jul 21st

What is your guitar lick?

Disclaimer: This is not actually an article on guitars. Read on. When you walk into a guitar store, unless you are Slash your guitar skills are unknown. Once you pick up a guitar, plug it into an amp for all to hear, and hit the strings for the first time, the first thing you play defines you as a player. If you start out with Smoke on the Water or Stairway to heaven, you will be banished and...

Jul 20th

Oh the irony

In our cafeteria there are table tents explaining the causes and dangers if diabetes. XX number of people have it, YY number of people die from it, and so on. After breakfast, they often put out leftover food that was not sold. Surrounding the table tent explaining the causes and dangers of diabetes are 4 chocolate covered doughnuts.

Jul 17th

Moths Outwit Bats By Jamming Sonar →

This is just so cool.

Jul 17th

Gran Torino

I finished Gran Torino tonight. Very good movie. Clint Eastwood should be proud if he goes out with this one.

Jul 15th

Beautiful Windmills

We are vacationing in Cape Vincent, NY right now. Right across the river is a Canadian island called Wolf Island. On this island are 50+ windmills that likely provide most of the power for the island. From the shores of Cape Vincent you can see Wolf Island across the river. My first reaction was startling. There are a lot of windmills visible and I must say I can see how people might think of...

Jul 8th

Cost of startup

I’ve been talking with a co-worker who is trying to start his own Internet based business. His business will be typetribe.com when it grows up, but right now it is still in the idea/development stage. This got me to thinking about the cost of starting up a business like this. I am a software engineer for a very large company that makes airplanes. I also do a lot of side work with web...

Jul 8th

Echo, echo, echo, echo, echo

I used to use a service called iwantsandy. With this service I could send e-mail to a particular e-mail address and it would remind me about things. I could send an e-mail saying “remind 3 days change cat litter” and in 3 days I would get an e-mail reminding me to change the cat litter. This was very useful for things that do not have specific calendar event times. I wouldn’t use it for a...

Jul 8th

Peanut shelling machine

What does the machine look like that shells peanuts? It takes me a baseball game to go through a small bag of peanuts. I hope their processing rate is better.

Jul 7th

“hush little baby go to sleep. I won’t sleep until tomorrow.”

– Eleanor age 6 John

Jul 3rd

Getting stuff down

Getting my ideas out of my head and down in some external form is my latest productive improvement. This goes beyond the “getting things done” ideas where not just the things you need to do get written, but most every idea or concept get’s written or typed. This blog is just one of the forms. I used to keep everything in my head. I didn’t carry a notebook at work. In...

Jul 3rd

“I don’t want to sleep on the air mattress on the floor! I want to sleep...”

– Abigail (4 years old) at the beginning of a 2 week vacation.

Jul 3rd

iPhone usage tip

I discovered this by accident when the iPhone 3.0 OS came out. I put all the applications I use on the first page of the home screen. I have a LOT of applications installed, most of which I never use. All the applications I use on daily basis are on the home screen. For some reason, it created a blank home page after the primary home page screen. In there it put the new applications. As new...

Jul 3rd

Shampoo bottle

In PragPub (The Pragmatic Bookshelf) I found a quote saying… “If the shampoo bottle in the shower is turned around half the time, why isn’t the logo on both sides? — @KentBeck” This makes sense, but there is another analysis to consider. Most people run their mornings on auto-pilot and in a specific order. The shampoo typically has a flip top. The bottle will be...

Jul 2nd

“Wow, that looks a lot better than I thought it would.”

– John Aughey after taking a picture of his Father-in-law and wife on the beach. It was evening and the viewfinder showed a washed out blah image. However, with the flash the people were lit up and the background was a beautiful evening sky. It didn’t quite come out the way I expected.

Jul 2nd

Technology is cool

So I’m on a road trip and taking advantage of technology. Mainly GPS and my iPhone. Here are some of the things I’ve done. On the way out, we needed lunch in the middle of nowhere Ohio. Using the trusty GPS it found restaurants at the next exit that were not on the highway information signs. We found a town just a mile down the road with a lovely DQ so the kids had a great meal...

Jul 1st

I’m trying out posting to Tumblr from AIM. This could be useful for those quick posts. Though Twitter seems more appropriate for that sort of post.

Jul 1st

WEP Passwords

Why do WEP client programs ask that I enter in the WEP key more than once? The fields are typically like a “Password - Password Confirm” type thing, but if I type it in wrong it’s not going to work, so why ask me to try to type it wrong twice? It’s a difficult hex key to type anyway, just let me type it in once and let the 802.11x authentication tell me if I’m...

Jul 1st

iPhone gps

The gps caps with the cut and paste is a great way to keep people informed of our travel progress John

Jun 29th

Flight 1549 passenger wants therapy compensation -... →

Ok, I don’t know where this blog is going with respect to personal/political comentary, but I can’t let this pass… No one is responsible for two birds hitting an airplane. You’re lucky the pilot had his wits and “landed” safely. Sure it was tramatic - get over it. Write a book about it. Talk to friends and family. Deal with it yourself. Life can be hard...

Jun 26th

Don’t Blink: 392 MPH Glider Tears Through the Air... →

This is really amazing stuff. It’s amazing how they got the glider up to 392 mph in a 45 mph wind without any external power.

Jun 26th

When to e-mail?

I’m on the “This Old House” e-mail list. Several times a week they send an e-mail on house/gardening tips and suggestions. They do a really great job and it is well written and well rounded, appealing to all types of skill levels. However, they send this e-mail out between 8am and 9am during the work week. I NEVER have time to read something like that at that time. Most of...

Jun 26th

Engineering/Management perspective

For most of my career I’ve done low level software engineering. I’ve been in charge of running some small programs, but mostly self-management type roles. I’m now doing a fair amount of team leading where I have to rely on work done by other people. It’s an amazing perspective change. I’ll continue on this further, but the realization I have now is I am so much...

Jun 25th

The next generation Internet (prediction)

This is a prediction of what the Internet will look like in 5-10 years. Currently the Internet model is a few large content providers such as Yahoo, Google, Facebook, and so on. There also few medium sized providers such as Dreamhost, MySpace, and company web sites. The majority of the “users” sit behind relatively slow DSL and cable modem connections with web browsers to pull the...

May 24th

Wine Glass Gift

I want to start a new fad. Here is my idea… When you go to someone’s house or party, often guests will bring a bottle of wine. For me, the wine glass is just as much a part of the wine experience as the actual vino. Glasses come in all shapes and sizes, widths and heights. When I think about a time I’ve had at someone’s house, I will have forgotten about the taste of...

Mar 8th

Feb 25th

Quote of the day

Daddy, after we finish eating ice cream can we play the video game?

Aug 9th